


Today Will Be Better, I Swear!

by th_esaurus



Category: Social Network (2010) RPF
Genre: Anxiety, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-24
Updated: 2013-02-24
Packaged: 2017-12-03 11:47:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/697926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/pseuds/th_esaurus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Andrew doesn’t ask him how long it’s been since he left the apartment. He just dumps his stuff next to Jesse’s twin bed, unzips the suitcase and takes out the Tetley teabags he’d bought; puts on a brew. Jesse’s kitchen is very bare and spotlessly clean and smells faintly of bleach. There’s a tin labeled coffee, which is nearly empty, and a tin labeled tea, which, when Andrew pops the lid, is brimming with pill bottles and repeat prescriptions. </p><p>He leaves them be, and puts his box of teabags on the windowsill instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Today Will Be Better, I Swear!

Jesse had learnt to survive on microwave meals, toast and Pogos as a student, so he never sees the sense in complicated cooking. His fridge consists of a dribble of 2% milk, a slab of Monterrey Jack that looks past its best, and half a jar of pickles; everything in his cupboards is dried and boxed. Andrew knows he sounds like an English nanny, but he clucks his tongue anyway. “When was the last time you bought food?” he asks, dreading the answer.  
  
“Um—“  
  
“If you have to think about it,” he sighs, “then that’s too long ago. Get your coat.”  
  
Jesse stands in the doorway, his jeans loose and his shoulders low. He hasn’t done anything with his hair today, and it stands to attention, clumps fluffed up like shabby soldiers. Andrew leans over and pets it down for him. Jesse looks at him like he’s asked for the world, his eyes dark and sad as a newscaster’s as he struggles to impart the bad news. “I can’t really—I mean, some of this is edible, right? We can eat it. We don’t need to—go out?”  
  
Andrew fishes a pen out of his pocket and offers it along with the back of his hand. “Essentials. Write ‘em.”   
  
He leaves the house with  _bread, juice, ice cream??, family pack pogos, a vegetable_  and  _surprise me_  scribbled on his skin, and comes back triumphant a half hour later with everything rattling around in a paper bag.  
  
Jesse smiles at him, and helps him unpack, and breathes out when Andrew puts his palm on the small of Jesse’s back.   
  


*

  
  
Andrew had been at home, spending a few lazy weeks with friends and family and copious pubs before he was scheduled to fly out LA, start the shoot that would fly him to the moon and back. He likes it in England, where he looks and sounds like other people, where stardom is a concept that old ladies in corner shops coo over. You’re in the pictures, dear? Ooh, isn’t that nice.   
  
He misses Jesse’s call, because Jesse always forgets about the time difference. He rolls over into bleary consciousness just as his phone finishes vibrating like a moth’s wing on his bedside table; grabs for it, misses twice, and then puts it on the pillow next to his face, playing Jesse’s message on loudspeaker.   
  
He books a last minute flight for New York in two days’ time, takes with him more stuff than anyone could need for a weekend trip. Jesse doesn’t meet him at the airport, but had left his street name and apartment number, so Andrew pays for a cab.  
  
“You didn’t have to come,” is how Jesse greets him, his bottom lip chewed dry. Andrew just claps a hand around his shoulder and shakes him into a hug and makes Jesse introduce him to the cats.  
  
There’s two temporaries, he says, and two permanent residents. “Three, I suppose,” he says, “counting yours truly.”  
  
Andrew doesn’t ask him how long it’s been since he left the apartment. He just dumps his stuff next to Jesse’s twin bed, unzips the suitcase and takes out the Tetley teabags he’d bought; puts on a brew. Jesse’s kitchen is very bare and spotlessly clean and smells faintly of bleach. There’s a tin labeled  _coffee_ , which is nearly empty, and a tin labeled  _tea_ , which, when Andrew pops the lid, is brimming with pill bottles and repeat prescriptions.   
  
He leaves them be, and puts his box of teabags on the windowsill instead.   
  


*

  
  
Andrew brought his script with him, and skims it over the breakfast table; Jesse sleeps late and wakes later. Andrew doesn’t like to wake him with the shower – everything’s next to everything else in this apartment, no secrets here – so he sits in his socks and Jesse’s slightly-short dressing gown, and munches on Clementine segments while he peruses his script, even though he’ll have forgotten every word by the time he’s called to arms.   
  
“Still at your indie arthouse movies, Andrew?” Jesse asks, his voice morning-quiet and his feet sleepily slow as he pads into the room. He goes to pick the wad of paper from Andrew’s hands, hesitates, waits for Andrew’s infinitesimal nod, then takes it loftily, turns it over. “ _The Web-Slinger_. Low budget exploration of science’s meddling with nature?”  
  
“But of course. What kind of integrity do you think I have? If more than seventeen people see it, I’ll have to quit the business.”  
  
The couch is pretty small and presses Jesse’s thigh into Andrew’s when he sits. He fidgets for a moment, then seems to settle on staying where he is. Andrew drapes his free arm along the back of the couch, just because it’s more comfortable like that and not because it’s easier for him to press a few reassuring fingertips to the nape of Jesse’s neck.  
  
“My agent keeps telling me to go pick up a bunch of scripts,” Jesse says, a sigh chasing the words out of him. “It’s probably not worth it. He’s probably got, like, two.”  
  
“Oh, sure. It’s not like you’re so hot right now.”  
  
Jesse makes a face with no trace of sarcasm.  
  
“I’ll drive you down to the studio, pick up your proof of popularity.”  
  
“You can’t drive.”  
  
“—You can drive me down to the studio.”  
  
Jesse fiddles with the fabric of his pajama pants, picking at the knee and turning the simple shrug into an art form. Andrew touches him again, an I’m-here gesture that ends up lingering. He takes his script back, opens it up across both their legs.   
  
“I’ll be Gwen Stacey,” he says. “You can be Spider-man.”  
  


*

  
  
Andrew calls the apartment homely and Jesse calls it a squat, but however they dress it up, it still only has one bed. “Well, this isn’t a thing,” Jesse says flatly, and it immediately becomes a thing.  
  
They’ve shared hotel rooms before, talked until dawn on a single bed, Andrew’s hands laced over his chest, his elbow bumping Jesse’s ribcage, but he always managed to roll off the bed just before sleep chased him down. Still, Jesse is particularly verbose at night, so for a while, it’s just the same as that, just like when they were shooting and Jesse needed to exorcise his character for the night by talking it out of himself. Expelling his inner douchebag, they called it.  
  
He doesn’t have any douchebag to kick out tonight, so he talks about when he was young and didn’t know how people worked and couldn’t actively touch anyone between the ages of ten and fourteen.  
  
Andrew and Jesse wake up as they slept, top-to-tail, but shifted into the middle of the bed, where the mattress sags a little, awkwardly spooned together. Mostly at their crotches. Andrew can feel Jesse’s upside-down butt pressed neatly up against his.  
  
He gets up swiftly, all in one movement, like ripping off a plaster that’s long since made its home on his fingertip. He carries the motion all the way through to the kitchen, puts the kettle on, finds a frying pan buried deep enough to give away its lack of use, and makes American pancakes.   
  
They’re cold by the time Jesse gets up. He doesn’t look morning-bleary. Doesn’t look like he just woke up.   
  
“Grub’s up?” Andrew says redundantly, fishing.  
  
“Sorry,” is all Jesse mutters.  
  
Andrew probably could fit lengthways across the lounge floor, could go grab a couple blankets from Target and improvise with cushions, but he shrugs and says he doesn’t want to mess his back up, doesn’t like the New York traffic drilling through the window, doesn’t want to bother the cats.   
  
“So bothering me is the better option?” Jesse asks, and Andrew checks to see if he’s smiling before he answers.  
  


*

  
  
  
It takes Andrew a good hour to walk to the Time Warner center, even though Jesse warned him it was a million blocks away, but Andrew wanted to play the tourist for a minute. He tries on a pair or two of dress shoes, doesn’t buy any; pretends to be interested in spice racks while a well-meaning store clerk tells him about their fantastic range of mortar and pestles; ambles around Borders, flicks through a magazine with Carey Mulligan on the cover to see if she said anything bitchy about him (she never does, bless her heart). He buys a hardback copy of  _White Cat_  for Jesse as a joke.   
  
Andrew sits in Jamba Juice, nursing a smoothie on his knees as he leans on the tabletop. He takes an hour to drink it, conducts an extremely informal phone interview with some movie blog he meant to research. They ask him if he’s still close to his  _Social Network_  co-stars, and he laughs a fond, stupid little laugh.   
  
The sun is setting sultrily through the skyscrapers as Andrew makes his way back to Jesse’s place, flinging patches of colour wherever it can through the gaps in the cityscape. Jesse doesn’t keep a key under his doormat, because he’s famous and paranoid, but he gave Andrew his own the day he flew in. He never mentioned if this was a temporary gift or a permanent privilege.   
  
Jesse is sitting on the carpet, his back pressed against the sofa and his shoulders hunched over like a cliff-face. His bony knees are drawn up to his chest, his hands clasped around his ankles, white knuckled vices. His hair – his face pressed down into his kneecaps, Andrew can’t read his expression through the shadows – his hair is a shock of ringlets, a naturally curly mess, shower-wet that morning and left to dry however it damn well pleased.   
  
He’s wearing the t-shirt he went to bed in and a pair of boxers and nothing else. Like he started dressing and suddenly couldn’t find the will to go on. It must have been hours and hours ago.   
  
“Hey,” Andrew says gently, crouching. He doesn’t want to startle Jesse. “Hey.”  
  
There had been times, on set – not many, not often, but on occasion – when Jesse would go quiet and bury inside himself and shoot his scenes and nod when David told him how to shake up the tone and not talk to anyone and not talk to Andrew either, but would go stand by him, press up against Andrew’s side almost like he lost his balance for a moment. Andrew never asked him what was wrong. That wasn’t his job. His job was to be there to stop Jesse falling.  
  
Slowly, all his movements water-thick and smooth and delicate, Andrew sits down next to Jesse’s hunched little body, wraps one arm around his shoulders, and then the other too, and then reels him in. Jesse goes easily, already long given up the fight. His nose bumps awkwardly against Andrew’s neck, and one of his big hands, too big for those flimsy wrists, makes it across the gap between their bodies, clutches at Andrew’s arm.   
  
That’s just how they stay, wordless, until Jesse has taken in enough of Andrew’s touch to feel like a human being again.   
  
Andrew orders Chinese over the phone, far too much for two though they can always eat the leftovers tomorrow. Jesse rolls his eyes at Andrew’s appropriately British failure to navigate his chopsticks, nearly manages to laugh. They both sit on the same side of the dinner table.   
  
“You’re not socially obligated to come back here,” Jesse tells him. Andrew taps his shoulder and gets him to hold his arms up, rolls his old t-shirt up Jesse’s skinny chest and puts a fresh one on him, even just to go to bed.  
  
“That is a very factual statement,” Andrew replies lightly. “I absolutely cannot argue with the factualness of what you just said.”  
  
They forget to sleep top-to-tail, and then they forget to pretend that’s an issue.   
  


*

  
  
Jesse had never been a go-getter, last picked for sports teams, hours psyching himself in front of the mirror before auditions, the kind of guy who’ll let life drift by him for fear there might be something lurking in the cloudy water. He tells Andrew these things in a tone of voice that doesn’t reveal a contentment at his lot in life, but a begrudging acceptance of it, like he long ago looked up at the sky and lost a staring contest with his God.   
  
When Andrew turns his head, he can see a mound of cream pillow, and most of Jesse’s profile. This late at night, Jesse wears the weight of all his simple mistakes and inconsequential bad judgments like stage make-up, starkly visible in the creases around his eyes, the twitching corner of his mouth.   
  
“How are you with other people taking risks?” Andrew asks mildly.   
  
“Oh sure, other people can do what they want. It’s my fuck ups that matter.” Jesse turns his head too, and his gaze scatters around Andrew’s face like the light of a glitterball. “My therapist told me I need to realize the world doesn’t revolve around me,” he says, with a sad sort of shrug, “but it’s hard when you can’t see the world from anyone else’s point of view.”  
  
Andrew closes the space between their lips. He doesn’t rush it, paces himself like a long-distance runner, where he and Jesse can both see the finish line. Jesse could roll over, pull back, laugh him off if he wanted to. It’s a pleasant surprise when Andrew’s mouth actually touches Jesse’s. He flinches when Andrew’s hand comes up to rest lightly on the hard line of his jaw, so Andrew strokes there softly with his thumb, soothing. Jesse’s skin is a little dry; his lips moreso. Andrew wets them just so, subtly, sucks on Jesse’s bottom lip, and can feel the cracked grooves and ridges there with his tongue. Jesse bites his lips too much.   
  
When Andrew shifts closer, his leg settling in the space between Jesse’s, his knee just short of Jesse’s crotch – his not entirely restless dick – is when Jesse makes a noise like regret, scrunches his eyes up and pushes at Andrew’s chest. Andrew pulls back instantly. “Hey,” he says, his go-to reassurance.   
  
“This isn’t—something I can—“ Jesse struggles. He can’t keep eye contact with Andrew, his gaze flitting up and down, trying to find a safe place to look that isn’t at Andrew’s face or the cords of his throat or his solid collarbone. “It’s just kind of—“  
  
“No, it’s cool,” Andrew says, hushed and trying to smile. He extricates his limbs carefully, gives Jesse’s body a little space, though doesn’t stray far from his mouth. “You want me to go?”  
  
“I—I’m not—“  
  
Jesse’s only a slight young man, a half-formed sketch in the book of the world, so Andrew’s arms go all the way around him easily. He doesn’t kiss Jesse any more, doesn’t touch him anywhere below his hips.  
  
“This is okay,” Jesse mumbles after a while, apologetic, like he’s sorry he couldn’t find better words. “I can deal.”  
  
Andrew’s palm is resting over Jesse’s vivid pulse. He keeps it right there until the beat of Jesse’s panic evens out and softens and falls into a rhythm as steady as his sleeping breath.  
  


*

  
  
It’s really a titanic shift in their relationship, but Andrew plays it like it’s no big deal. When Jesse, nervously exploring, touches his shirtless waist while he’s making breakfast, Andrew cants into his fingertips, laughs and tells him his hands are cold; laughs again and tells him that wasn’t a criticism. When he can feel Jesse watching him instead of the television, he turns easily, leans, always slow, into the kisses Jesse can’t ask for. Makes sure he’s okay after each one, before the next.   
  
Armie saunters through New York City and invites them both out for coffee. Jesse gets as far as buttoning his coat and lacing up his Chucks, and then no further. Andrew calls Armie and tells him they’ll go another time, the timing’s just off this weekend. It’s no skin off Armie’s back. They sit with the apartment windows all flung open, getting some air around the place, eating Cheetos and corn dogs and reading through Jesse’s latest script offerings in stupid accents from around the world. Mexican for the political thriller. Welsh for the ridiculous space opera. Regency British for the Jewish mafia movie.   
  
Andrew unzips Jesse’s jeans and shucks them down to his thighs, rubs his palm and thumb against Jesse’s dick, just through his briefs, kissing him all the while to distract him. Jesse apologises constantly, pushing and pulling against Andrew’s touch, like he’s genuinely sorry for being turned on. “If I come, I’ll have to go self-flagellate for three days in repentance,” he babbles, and Andrew asks him if having a coffee in bed would be a suitable post-coital punishment instead. He slides his hand under the lip of Jesse’s waistband, jerking him off in earnest.   
  
While Jesse’s in the shower, Andrew has a twenty-minute phone call with Jesse’s agent. It ends with a stilted sigh from the other end of the line, and a man Andrew’s never met imploring him to take care of the boy.   
  
“He can take care of himself, sir,” Andrew says, trying to sound respectful. “He just needs a little help, that’s all.”  
  


*

  
  
Andrew’s almost asleep when he feels Jesse roll over and curl himself along Andrew’s spine, their bodies pressed together, separated by not much more than thin, worn cotton, strategically placed. He can hear the shift of the sheets that gives away Jesse’s movements, but he doesn’t feel any touch for a long time, like Jesse can’t decide where’s the right place to let his hand rest. Andrew doesn’t prompt him, just lets him go at his own pace. His hand, thin fingers, long palm, lands low on Andrew’s hip, falters for just a second, then slides down and in and along Andrew’s skin, brushing through his hair down there, shakily thumbing over the curve of his cock. Jesse has to lean in closer to reach it, his breath ghosting over the shell of Andrew’s ear, feather-soft on his cheek.   
  
“You know I’m awake, right?” he says, very carefully.  
  
“I know,” Jesse replies. His hand stops for a minute, and he has to collect himself, his mouth pressed to Andrew’s bare shoulder. “I want to—you know?”  
  
“I know,” Andrew says too.   
  
He gets Jesse to take the reigns on this one, to set the pace however slow he wants. They both wriggle out of their pajamas under the sheet, to save that particular embarrassment, then Andrew gets Jesse up, motions with his hands for Jesse to straddle him. “Like this?” Jesse keeps asking, as he lays his skinny chest over Andrew’s like a blanket. “Like this?”  
  
Jesse’s no virgin, Andrew knows that much from their night-time heart-to-hearts, but he has no faith in his body, in his skill, winces every time he seeks Andrew’s gentle reassurance that he’s doing good. Andrew doesn’t mind. He waits for Jesse to get comfortable, their legs hooked up at the ankle, Jesse’s ribs and angles poking at his chest, their dicks, unacknowledged as yet, just about touching, then tells him again, yeah, it’s good, that feels good.   
  
Jesse looks like he needs to speak. “I’m having a bad patch,” he says, after a long time.  
  
“No kidding,” Andrew says, without malice, stroking Jesse’s neck with his thumb, from his collarbone to his chin.   
  
“Usually I just—wait until it passes. Like a rough storm, y’know?”  
  
“Has it been better this time?”  
  
Jesse swallows, and Andrew feels it under the pad of his thumb. “With you here. Mm. It’s been better.”  
  
He leans in haltingly, kisses Andrew off his own steam for the first time. It’s a nervous little kiss, but Andrew tilts his head, finds an angle that works, holds Jesse’s face in his hands.   
  
“Wrap your hand like—that’s it,” Andrew murmurs, looking down between them.   
  
“Like this?”  
  
“Yeah,” Andrew says, breathing out on a sigh and letting his back arch upwards. “Like that.”  
  


*

  
  
The sun is already slicing through the blinds by the time Andrew wakes up, painting patterns on the far wall of the bedroom. He’s pretty tired and pretty naked and leans up to check the time on Jesse’s digital clock, his side of the bed.  
  
Jesse’s gone. There’s no watery whisper coming from the bathroom, no muffled morning news report wafting in from the lounge. Jesse can’t and won’t cook, so Andrew knows by instinct he’s not in the kitchen. He sits up, stretches out his back, cracks his neck to either side, then finds a pair of boxers on the floor and pulls them on.   
  
Jesse really is gone. One of the cats winds itself around Andrew’s bare ankles, mewling, unfed. Andrew scratches the back of its neck, and then the back of his. Jesse’s cell phone is sitting on the tabletop. Its battery’s been dead for a week.   
  
“Shit,” Andrew sighs.   
  
He makes a mug of tea and composes a mental list of who to call first and what to say. He doesn’t think  _I scared him off with sex_  is a particularly winning excuse.  
  
Andrew’s still worrying about it when the door opens. There’s a shuffle and a stamping off feet on the mat, and then the slam of the door closing again, and then Jesse wanders in, wearing a Gap hoodie over his pajamas and a pair of converse with no socks underneath. He’s carrying two plastic bags full of groceries, and his hair looks a little wind-mussed, his cheeks pinked up from the chill air and the fight with his mental walls. He toes off his shoes on the way to the kitchen, gets the bag up on the counter top, and stops abruptly, just in front of Andrew, looking at him until he can’t quite manage it anymore.  
  
“I got you cheddar,” he says. Andrew puts his hands in Jesse’s pockets and pulls him the little stretch forward, bumping their stomachs together. “You Brits love cheddar, right?”  
  
“Generalisation,” Andrew mutters, pressing his lips to Jesse’s pale neck.  
  
“You do though, right?”  
  
“I do. You did good.”  
  
“Okay,” Jesse says, his voice finally shaking and his arms coming up to cling tightly to Andrew, like a steady buoy in uncertain waters.   
  
“Okay,” he says again, and almost sounds like he believes it.


End file.
